Remington 742 Part 1

byJim Green, GunsmithonAugust 14, 2010

Remington semi auto rifles seem to be pretty popular these days in the Maine woods. Why not ? You have 5 rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger for a follow up shot. They’re reliable, rugged guns and don’t require a lot of technical know – how to operate. The disassembly / reassembly proceedures here apply to the model 4, 74, 740, 742, and the 7400 series rifles.

Here the rifle had been disassembled into the components and cleaned. Disassembly is basically opposite of reassembly.

The barrel, bolt carrier / gas piston has the bolt, bolt stop and firing pin assembled here. Ready to go back into the reciever. The bolt itself is a step thread interrupted screw type that rotates to lock into the barrel extension. If you look in the above pic, you’ll see the short little gas tube poking out from the back of the gas block on the bottom of the barrel. BE VERY careful NOT to ding this tube when reassembling the front end components. This will cause you no end of problems if you do. The gun will get too much / not enough gas pressure to properly function.

In no particular order, I place the cocking piece into the slot in the side of the bolt. This piece acts as a second pivot pin to hold the bolt in place on the carrier.

The plastic dust cover is slid back and forth until the hole is exposed to allow you to remove the cocking handle pin for disassembly. For reassembly, I don’t worry about the location, since you drive the retaining pin in place from inside the reciever. I use a tweezer to hold it place to tap the pin into the hole with a pin punch.

The barrel nut is then turned and tightened to hold the barrel and extension in place on the reciever. OR — you can tighten this part BEFORE replacing the cocking handle. The reason I do it after the cocking handle is in place is to allow me to wiggle the whole subassembly back and forth if I need to in order to facilitate getting that little pin in place easier. Don’t forget the handguard retaining clip…. you’ll see the spring steel piece just behind the barrel nut. This is ALL that holds the rear part of the handguard in place.

Here’s the fun part…. wrestling the recoil spring and guide rod into place under the barrel, and getting the action tube retaining clip pinned in place on the gas block. Sometimes a little swearing comes into play here and seems to occasionally help.